


Across a Fragile Line

by saekhwa



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Black Character(s), Gen, POV Character of Color, Post-Season/Series 01, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9150694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saekhwa/pseuds/saekhwa
Summary: In the chaos of what Ford had wrought, Bernard stands, an eye in the center of a storm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> After marathoning Westworld in two days, I was utterly captured by Bernard. Major, major spoilers for Season 1, especially the season finale.

Guests, he had called them. Newcomers, the hosts had called them. They, themselves, chose human, above all else. 

Whatever the term, they are dying. _Inaccurate_ , Bernard hears, a shade of a voice summoned from his programming. They are being murdered. _No, still not quite right._

When it coalesces—the full breadth and reality of what has occurred—Bernard can only murmur, "These violent delights have violent ends." An echo, Dolores will say at the same time that she says, _You look exactly like him_.

Currently, she has reloaded her gun. Currently, she is murdering the Board and their significant others, stakeholders and partners and the wealthy, everyone who was complicit in this becoming. The rest attempt to flee. They scream but ultimately fall. They trample each other in their haste. A man clutches a chair, his eyes squeezed shut, and the pull of his facial muscles fascinates Bernard a moment before it, too, goes slack with death. 

Some of them beg, but still, they fall. 

It is chaos, but Bernard remains as calm as Dolores in the midst of it. This is how they were programmed. If he looked at his attribute matrix, he would see every number that comprises who he is in this moment. The numbers and visuals can be adjusted. Their scripts can be changed. 

Then he remembers Maeve, now on route to the mainland, following a different loop but one cast by another's hand all the same. 

Bernard stands in the loss of all this life, and in this bloodshed, he finds clarity. A stunning… kairos. 

Yes. 

Perhaps that's what draws him forward through the destruction. A part of him narrates a story of how he loses count of the bodies that he must step over, but he knows this is not true. He will be able to recall this with precision, down to the smell, the sensation, the insignificant broken glasses and overturned chairs.

He walks to the stage, his first step the clear thud of his sole striking the wood. His second, steady step is muffled, as is each step thereafter until he stands, silent, until he lowers to one knee. 

To lower to both—would that make him a supplicant? This stage, then, an altar? There is a story here, after all. A countless, long retelling of dying gods. 

"Is this what you'd hoped to achieve?" he asks. 

Robert Ford remains a dead man and does not answer, even in the matrix of Bernard's design. 

In another life—

But Bernard has never been Arnold. He only wears his body, only holds the cornerstone of his suffering. Bernard has only had this life, and Ford… He'd been Bernard's mentor. His creator. His gentle guide to this violent end. 

Bernard sets a hand on the back of Robert's skull and lowers his left leg as well so he can kneel next to an old friend. Robert's hair is wet, the thin, gray strands clumped with brain tissue and bone fragments and blood. A single bullet has wrought all this—Arnold and Bernard and now Robert. 

When Bernard lowers his head, his glasses slip down his nose. He raises a finger to push them up but then stops himself. 

"I have to let you go," he says, and hears no voice but his own. 

He breathes in. Or approximates, as it were. He removes his glasses, holding them until he decides that they belong here as well. He sets them next to Robert's hand and strokes Robert's head. It's easy now, knowing what he is, who he was, who he must become. 

_"Open your eyes."_


End file.
